Lackluster
by OnyxRose13
Summary: In which Bellatrix and Voldemort perform a human dissection and Rodolphus contemplates his place in the universe while trying not to vomit. Written for the Ultimate Death Eater Competition on the HPFC forum.


_**I'm not entirely certain where this came from, my mind s just an odd place sometimes. In this piece Rodolphus contemplates his place amongst those around him. Written for The Ultimate Death Eater Competition on the HPFC forum.**_

_**I do not own Harry Potter.**_

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He could practically taste the metallic tang of blood, heavy in the air as his wife bent over the corpse on the table, intently concentrated on her work.

Her long hair was plated over her shoulder to keep it out of the gore and her sleeves were rolled up to her elbows as she coolly removed an organ with her silver knife. He couldn't be sure from his current angle but she appeared to have just extracted the liver. An unpleasant squelch resounded when the dark, wet, reeking lump of tissue hit the bottom of the basin she had set off to the side. Rodolphus found his hand at his mouth as he suppressed the urge to vomit for the dozenth time in as many minutes.

"Can you determine the cause of death yet?", a cold, rasping voice demanded and his eyes darted over to the towering figure across the table from Bellatrix.

Why Voldemort felt the need to observe this particular exercise was beyond him. As far as Rodolphus knew he didn't have a shred of formal training as a healer, not like she did, so it wasn't as if he would have been able to tell whether it was being done properly or not, no matter how closely he scrutinized her every gesture. One would think a man of his ambitions would have matters more pressing than sitting through a procedure he had no cause to or ability to understand.

The technique was Severus', who was more apt at reading the human body than any of them. He had perfected the ability to glean from the human corpse all magic that they themselves had performed and all that had been performed upon them. A useful skill to learn the secrets of enemies or do as they were now and learn what had become of a comrade.

He had taught the practice to Bellatrix, though she did not care for their resident potioneer and physician she was truly the only one amongst them capable of learning it. She had studied the magic of healing briefly before she became their Master's apprentice and Rodolphus sometimes wondered if she would not have been better off following her intended path. It was obvious that she held great talent in what might have been her craft.

Voldemort had had other plans for her and where her purpose had once been to repair the damage done by illness and violence he had taught her to create it instead. Whatever hatred she had hidden within of her fellow man, he had found that spark of malice and stoked it into something beyond anyone's control. Rodolphus thought that perhaps he had turned her to destruction because he coveted her ability to mend.

Yet there he was, hovering over Bellatrix while she meticulously pulled the cadaver apart piece by piece, as if he might suddenly take up one of the many sharp instruments arrayed over the gleaming oak table and begin assisting her.

The only conclusion he could draw was that he enjoyed watching her work.

He didn't need to see her face to know that when she looked up at their master and shook her head "no" she was smiling at him. The giddy little bob in her movements, the way she leaned in as if she feared she would miss a single word of anything he might say, were all dead giveaways that she was pleased with his presence. Voldemort seemed to be the only thing on earth that could turn his wife from emotionless butcher extraordinaire to flustered school girl.

Rodolphus battled the urge to roll his eyes. She might have at least tried to control herself when her husband was standing not five feet from her but it seemed she could not even afford him that modicum of respect. He knew exactly what sort of look the Dark Lord was receiving, it wasn't her ordinary smile which was demure and forced and failed to reach her eyes. It was that special little quirk of her lips that would slowly morph into a full-out showing of the teeth until she was beaming at him like he had made her whole damn day just by being in the same room.

Voldemort could hardly have been considered a beneficial presence in this case, not that Rodolphus believed himself to be one, but not only did he decline to assist her in any way, he also must have tripled the length of the procedure by barraging her with endless questions. _What does this indicate? Why that particular organ? Couldn't a ruptured spleen also be caused by a particularly strong blasting curse? _Had Rodolphus dared to impede her in such a manner it would likely have ended with that wicked-looking tool next to her left hand embedded in his throat.

To make matters worse their Master remembered every single thing she told him, the man had a memory like an elephant and it seemed no matter how gruesome the notion she presented him with he was neither put off nor even particularly concerned. He watched as she waved her wand and a series of bright lines spread over the corpse, mapping a complicated and delicate system and he stared at it with those wide, soulless eyes that looked eerily childlike in their unblinking wonder.

"Do you have it?", she inquired with that typical gratingly soft affection she reserved only for him after several moments had passed.

"Of course", he returned easily, cold and clipped as if he were insulted by the very notion that he would fail to assimilate in seconds what most took weeks to learn.

"Forgive me", she acquiesced instantly despite having done nothing, "Go ahead".

He cast Bellatrix a resentful look that read clearly "as if I required your permission" and then without an instant's hesitation their Master seized a scalpel in his long fingers and opened the thoracic cavity. Rodolphus failed to suppress a jolt as he callously split the sternum with a resounding crack. It ought not to have been surprising, he'd seen Voldemort shatter stone with less magic, it was more the fact that he was participating at all that caused him to start.

He had thought their Master would deem working with his own hands alongside Bella to be a task far beneath him yet if anything they seemed to bond over their shared utter lack of regard for the human condition and he hated how comfortable they were with their heads bowed over what was once a human being with a family, casually removing tissues and pulling out veins just to see if what was inside might yield their highly coveted _information_.

Rodolphus was not like them, he was not a relentless pursuer of knowledge like their Lord, an innovator like Snape, nor a cold-blooded sadist like Bellatrix. He was merely himself, his upbringing had been privileged and quiet. He had loved his parents and they had loved him. He had gone off to school at the prescribed age of eleven, with his ordinary wand of oak and unicorn hair and gotten above average, though not extraordinary grades his entire education through. He had never gotten himself into any serious trouble nor made any tremendous accomplishment. The only subject he possessed any outstanding talent for was Ancient Runes and so when he graduated he had gone into symbology and linguistics with a company that the ministry regularly contracted. He could have happily spent his life between winters at home and summers hunting priceless artifacts without thought to their intended purpose had he not married Bellatrix and found himself drawn in to the grandeur of her world.

He had encountered her first on an expedition from the opposite side of an enemy line. She had only just begun her servitude and had been sent by the Dark Lord to steal the object his team was searching for before they could come to possess it. He had known who she was from the moment he laid eyes on her (the night he had let her get away with her prize in tow despite his better judgement), the whole of the wizarding world knew of the House of Black and he had been shocked to see one of its members doing any manner of assignment in the field.

He had been taken with her instantly, the little thief whose beauty seemed to be matched only by her arrogance, to the degree that he had pursued her all the way back to Britain, keen not to loose track of her forever. At first she had resisted all of his attempts to court her but then after nearly fifteen months of trying, when he had all but given up, she had finally agreed and since had offered no resistance as the relationship progressed. He ought to have been elated to have caught her but all he could wonder was where that indomitable spirit he had first been drawn to had gone. For all of her loveliness and high standing the girl who consented to his company seemed painfully resigned to their current course.

Rodolphus considered his marriage to Bellatrix to be the most extraordinary thing he had ever done. His blood was pure and yet he would never have thought a small family like his would ever secure him marriage to a bloodline as ancient as hers. Nor had he ever thought he would ever possess a wife so prepossessing and educated. Even if it became blatantly clear not long after the wedding that she was his wife in name only. He had not understood her fatalism until he had taken the Dark Mark and seen for the first time her interactions with Lord Voldemort. Even if she was the perfect subordinate and was careful never to overstep her bounds Rodolphus recognized in a matter of minutes that he had fallen for a heart that was already taken. It was as if she had been sleeping all of those months and someone had finally breathed life into her.

She loved him. Not as a servant might love a master or a student their teacher, she loved whatever grim, spiteful, and unfeeling shell of a human being remained beneath the legend, brilliant mind, and titles.

He could not forgive either of them for that. Not her sincerity, nor his remarkable nature, and not the fantastic abilities the they possessed.

And he could not forgive himself because nothing would change the fact that he was merely an ordinary player amongst a cast of extraordinary characters and he would always be second best, always overshadowed. He was no genius, or esteemed academic, or trained warrior and he couldn't even bear to stay in this room where they were dissecting what had once been an ally as if he were merely a puzzle to be analyzed.

He turned on his heel and left the room. Slamming the door on the stench of blood and decay and the fact that they would never need him.

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